Why Indian-American children keep winning the National Spelling Bee

Cochampions
Nihar Saireddy Janga and Jairam Jagadeesh Hathwar, right, hold
their trophy upon completion of the final round of Scripps
National Spelling Bee at National Harbor in
Maryland.Kevin
Lamarque/Reuters

Legacies are a special phenomenon in major competitions.

Murderers' Row — the New York Yankees squad of the 1920s — owned
baseball for an entire decade. The Chicago Bulls ruled the 1990s.
And for the
last 18 years, Indian-American children have dominated the
Scripps National Spelling Bee.

The most recent bee was no exception. On Thursday, the annual
competition ended in a tie for the third consecutive year.

Jairam Hathwar, 13, andNihar Janga, 11, were
declared cochampions, with Janga becoming the youngest winner on
record,
according to ESPN.

The previous 10 champions were also Indian-American, and the last
two pairs of cochampions tied simply because neither speller
committed an error.

But unlike the reign of the Yankees and the Bulls, both of which
can be explained by the chemistry of each team, there is no one
factor that explains how Indian kids have accomplished their
feat.

The underground circuit

Shalini Shankar, head of the Asian American Studies Program at
Northwestern University,
has been trying to solve this mystery for the last three
years. She's even writing a book on the topic: "Spellebrity:
Inside the Selfie Generation's World of Competitive Spelling."

Shankar's research suggests the trend of Indian winners involves
the combination of a minor-league spelling circuit, strong
community involvement, an Indian-American love of so-called brain
sports, and, as of late, the growing rigor of the National
Spelling Bee itself, which inspires more kids to take up the
hobby.

While the trend has lasted the better part of two decades, it may
have its roots slightly farther back.

In 1989, an India-based nonprofit called the
North South Foundation set up shop in Illinois. Among
its
goals: "Promote excellence in human endeavor by organizing
Educational Contests for the kids in USA," primarily among the
South-Asian community. Since 1993, the NSF has been hosting
contests of its own, including national spelling bees.

But unlike the public school system, which normally begins
holding spelling bees once kids hit third grade, the NSF lets
kids enter as early as first grade. It also hosts year-round
competitions, unlike Scripps, which only has a national
competition each May.

Nearly all Indian contestants who compete at the Scripps National
Spelling Bee also compete in the NSF bees, honing their skills on
the side as they prepare for the lead up to May's competition.

According to Shankar, that gap of two to three years of
continuous training translates into NSF 9-year-olds having
thousands more words under their belt, not to mention
the practice of spelling in a high-pressure environment.

"They have that exposure," Shankar says of the kids competing in
the NSF. "They are becoming habituated to what it means to be in
this sort of competition."

1,000 words an hour

Shankar's research also points to the overwhelming amount of
support Indian kids get from their families and surrounding
community to participate in competitive spelling.

Oftentimes, when a student ages out of eligibility for the
Scripps National Spelling Bee, their family will pass the study
materials onto another family. The parents of the older child may
even step in to help with studying directly, Shankar says.

In visiting more than a dozen families, she says she's noticed
that Indian kids will spend time studying not just ordinary
dictionaries, but dictionaries made up solely of prefixes and
suffixes. Leading up to the Scripps finals, it isn't uncommon for
a child to blaze through 1,000 words an hour, Shankar says.

And contrary to popular belief, parents aren't barking orders to
make all this happen.

"You can't push your kid to win a national spelling bee," she
says. "You just can't."

Instead, the spellers tend to see their long study hours on par
with fielding ground balls or shooting free throws. It's hard
work, but it's fun and in the pursuit of something much larger.
"As several parents explained to me, spelling bees are the 'brain
sports' equivalent of travel soccer or Little League," Shankar
wrote in an op-ed for Newsweeklast year.

Keeping the legacy alive

Decades-long trends don't go unnoticed.

Beginning with the 2002 documentary "Spellbound," which showed
Nupur Lala winning the 1999 Bee, Indian-American families have
entered into something of a feedback loop in pursuing spelling
stardom. According to Shankar, the more visibility Indian
spellers get, the more interest that gets generated in the
community, which produces more winners.

"It just kind of clicked together," Shankar says.

Though she can't prove the theory, all the right factors seemed
to have coalesced in the early 2000s: That's when "Spellbound"
broke onto the scene, and also when 6- and 7-year-olds in the
1993 NSF bee (the first one) would have been turning 12, 13, and
14 — the prime age for spelling-bee winners.

In a weird stroke of luck, in other words, the NSF planted a seed
in 1993 that perfectly blossomed in time for a game-changing
documentary. Suddenly, a niche activity that took place inside
one community had become a national phenomenon, and an entire
support network had already been set up to help these new
spellers succeed for the next decade and a half.

"A variety of different factors that were perhaps never intended
to all align, aligned," Shankar says. "And this is what came out
of it."